1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a method for spin coating semiconductor wafers with polymeric solutions, and more particularly to a method for improving wafer to wafer mean film thickness control and within wafer to wafer uniformity control on semiconductor wafers in order to improve critical dimension control.
2. Description of Related Art
The manufacture of integrated circuits involves the transfer of geometric shapes on a mask to the surface of a semiconductor wafer. Thereafter the semiconductor wafer corresponding to the geometric shapes or corresponding to the areas between the geometric shapes is etched away. The transfer of the shapes from the mask to the semiconductor wafer typically involves a lithographic process. This includes applying a photosensitive pre-polymer solution to the semiconductor wafer. The solvent in the pre-polymer solution is removed by evaporation, and the resulting polymer film is then baked.
The film is exposed to radiation, for example ultraviolet light, through a photomask supporting the desired geometric patterns. This is generally followed by a post-exposure bake process. The images in the photosensitive material are then developed by soaking the wafer in a developing solution. The exposed or unexposed areas are removed in the developing process, depending on the nature of the photosensitive material. Thereafter the wafer may undergo a wet etch process in an etching solution, or a dry plasma etch process. Both the wet and dry etch processes etch away the areas not protected by the photosensitive material. Due to their resistance to the etching process, the photosensitive materials are also known as photoresist. These may for instance be sensitive to ultraviolet light, electron beams, x-rays, or ion beams.
Mean thickness and uniformity control of the photoresist layer is an important criterion in the manufacture of integrated circuits. It ensures satisfactory reproduction of the geometric patterns on the semiconductor wafer. With the requirement for smaller dimensions, the photolithography processes have shifted to using light with shorter wavelengths and a resulting smaller depth of focus. Variations in thickness over the surface of the wafer and variations in thickness from one wafer to the next introduce non-reproducible variations in photoresist exposure and consequent non-reproducible variations in the ultimate details of the product which limit the possible size reductions.
Critical dimension (CD) control becomes more difficult with smaller feature sizes in which the line width is to be maintained, for example, within ten percent of the feature size. This problem will increase in importance in future devices with smaller feature sizes. For example, the speed of microprocessor and memory devices is strongly determined by the line width control of the critical dimensions. A chip with improved line width control can operate at higher frequencies due to smaller capacative and resistive losses. One method of achieving improved CD control is by means of wafer-to-wafer mean thickness and uniformity control of the resist, i.e., two-dimensional resist film profile control.
Convective diffusion and evaporation are two strongly coupled mass transfer mechanisms that determine film thickness uniformity profiles of spin coated photoresist films. Convective diffusion is the dominant thinning mechanism during the first few seconds of spin coating. Even though the evaporation mechanism starts out two orders of magnitude smaller during the initial moments of dispense, its nonzero and constant value causes viscosity of the resist material to increase dynamically, thus decreasing the convective diffusion of the photoresist. Subsequently, evaporation becomes the dominant mechanism which eventually determines the dry film thickness profile. The thinning rate due to evaporation starts to decrease eventually due to lowered diffusivity of the remaining solvents.
This strong dependence of the spin coating process on the evaporation mechanism requires today's modem wafer tracks to tightly control evaporation related physical parameters. Tightening of the electrical and/or mechanical control specifications on equipment contributes to the spiraling cost of processing wafers and may well limit the mean thickness control capability required by future generation devices since mechanical tolerances on equipment will not alleviate required process variances. Thus, an alternative approach is needed to achieve consistently more stringent process latitudes.
Unintentional changes in barometric pressure (BP) and relative humidity (RH) can cause significant variations in the resist film thickness control for which one-dimensional adaptive process control technology was developed. Variations in polymeric material temperature, substrate temperature and ambient temperature introduce not only mean film thickness variations but also changes in the within wafer uniformity.
There is a need for a method of spin coating semiconductor wafers with polymeric solutions that decouples two-dimensional resist film profiles from variations in polymeric material, substrate and ambient temperatures. There is a further need for a method which automatically adapting to changes in polymeric material, substrate and ambient temperatures to ensure that two-dimensional resist profiles are always controlled within their control limit.